Rummage sale questions...

[PRINCESS VIJA]

We are planning on doing a rummage this month. (a Friday and Saturday) I have some questions...

1. Do you label everything?

2. What times are best? 7am until what time??? Seems like most people are out in the morning, do you need late hours?

3. Any helpful hints?


Thanks!

 

[taylor3297]

We are planning on doing a rummage this month. (a Friday and Saturday) I have some questions...

1. Do you label everything?

2. What times are best? 7am until what time??? Seems like most people are out in the morning, do you need late hours?

3. Any helpful hints?


Thanks!

Yes, label everything. Also when pricing each item, decide if you really want to get rid of it or not. If you over price and aren't willing to haggle you will be stuck with the item at the end of the day.

7 AM until around noon is usually a good time. You will have most of your customers first thing in the morning.

Back to pricing, even though you may have items marked at a fair price, many will ask for a lower price. I just recently did a yard sale with a friend. For the first hour or so I didn't haggle too much on my prices and sold much of what I had. What was left I realized I needed to be willing to negotiate on prices. There was only one item I was not willing to negotatie on and I ended up keeping it.

I ended up makin close to $400.

Oh if you are selling clothes, put all the clothes on a tarp, provide paper grocery sacks, and let the customer fill the bag for $1. You will get rid of the majority of your clothes this way. Also, you won't have to price every single piece of clothing.

 

[kkwis2]

I just did a sale the last week of June. Here is what I found in my area:

Yes, price everything. Most people won't take the time to ask you, and it's likely that you will be busy at your check-out table. The only thing we didn't price individually was a rack of adult clothes. We put a big sign that said, "All adult clothing $1.00 per item."

An easy way to price is to get some address labels (a sheet of 1" x 2 5/8" has 30 on it) and print a sheet of $1, $2, etc. You can fit 2-3 dollar amounts per label. Then just cut them apart. They stick well but also come off well when it's time.

Also, for ease of adding, don't price anything under $.25 (I can't find the cents symbol on my computer!). Anything you think isn't worth a quarter, put in a basket labeled FREE. Or I also labeled some travel mugs FREE (we a ton of them) and put them on a table with other priced items. They all went and I just wanted them out of my cupboard!

We did Friday 8 - 1. We were steadily busy with a few lulls mixed in right up until the end. Saturday we did 8-12. Not one person came until 9:30. I think they all went to check out the Saturday only sales first, and then trickled in to see what we had left. We were lucky to sell $100 worth of stuff on the second day. Still worth it to me, though, because everything was already set up and I did get rid of more stuff.....and $100 is a $100.

I know it's hard, but try to be as organized as possible. We had a lot of comments about how well organized and clean our sale was (truly, thanks to my sister!). It makes it easier for people to shop when they don't have to dig. And if the presentation gives a feeling of being clean, then they will assume you are a "clean" person, which means your stuff has been well-taken care of which means they want to buy it!

Good luck!

 

[budafam]

I usually do presales the Thursday night before, from about 5-7 or 6-8. This gives people who have to work on Friday, a chance to come out and get great deals (I also usually make a KILLING on my presales).

I price EVERYTHING. For clothing (kids especially), I like to write the size on a tag with the price. It's so much easier for people with their arms full to see what size something is and this way I organize the sizes together. It's so much easier and I love that when I go to a garage sale and someone has that done for me.

We just had a garage sale in April and I had it open Thursday 6-8, Friday 8-5 and Saturday 8-12 and I made over $700. I still have way too much stuff leftover and I plan to have another one in September to hopefully clear some of it out.